Bell Official Gets|33 Months – for Starters

LOS ANGELES (CN) – Robert Rizzo, the top administrator for the City of Bell during its payroll scandal, was sentenced Monday to 33 months in federal prison for tax fraud – and faces another sentencing Wednesday. U.S. District Judge George King sentenced Rizzo for tax Fraud. He ordered the sentence to be served consecutively with a prison term he is expected to receive Wednesday for official corruption. King blasted Rizzo, 60, for “greed in cheating the taxpayers of the United States after cheating the citizens of Bell.” He ordered him to pay $255,984 in restitution to the tax man. “In his plea agreement, Rizzo admitted that he created a corporation to fraudulently claim losses on his income tax return, which served to illegally reduce his tax liability on the significant income he was receiving from the City of Bell,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement. Rizzo claims $571,530 in fraudulent business losses from 2006 through 2009, prosecutors said. This while he was paying himself hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary to run the small, poor city near Los Angeles.